Symantec Acknowledges Activation Bug, Posts Fix

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Symantec Corp. has acknowledged a problem with the activation feature included in many of its latest product releases, and has posted a fix to solve the issue.

In Symantec products which require activation, a bug in the activation procedure forced users to enter and reenter the activation codes required for the software to work each time the PC was restarted. The bug affects Norton Antivirus 2004 as well as all other Symantec English-language products which carry the “2004” label as part of the product’s brand name.

Symantec officials previously acknowledged the problem as early as October, but since then the bug has prompted criticism from various sources.

A Symantec spokesman, however, said such criticisms were unfounded save for a small handful of users. “I think the thing that’s important here is that the bug affected on the order of one-half of one percent of our users,” said Phil Weiler, a spokesman for Symantec, Cupertino, Calif., who added that the company provided workarounds until the fix was published. “The other thing was that those users were very vocal and very prompt in getting back to us.”

“This issue is caused by a problem with the Symantec Product Activation feature,” the site states. “Product Activation is an anti-piracy technology designed to verify that Symantec software products have been legitimately licensed”.

The fix requires customers to download an executable file to the desktop, and then reboot the PC. Perhaps ironically, the fix may require an additional reactivation of the software, Symantec said.

This story was updated at 5:05 PM PDT on Monday, Dec. 1 with comments from Symantec’s Weiler.

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